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open-source games and apps

Update 20/1/15: itch.io has now become a VAT-registered seller! I'll keep this post here for reference, but as far as I'm concerned, itch.io is the only option you need to consider now.

Having said that, I have also updated the Steam section and added a section on Paddle following conversations on twitter.

Note: I wrote this under the assumption that it will be a while before itch.io comes up with a better solution to the VAT mess. You might not want to jump ship just yet though, if this tweet by Sophie Houlden is any indication.

The recent changes to EU VAT rules have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works for those of us EU-based devs who have, up till now, sold our games through itch.io. I've been looking into the options available in this new landscape, and figured it would be worthwhile to summarise my findings.

I should note that this is aimed at those of us who are not earning a full-time wage from our games but simply wanting to earn a little money from them. If you're already earning a decent living from your games, you no doubt have a different set of options available to you.
Also, disclaimer: I'm not an accountant. Before you sign up for any of these services, make sure you read their terms and conditions and know what you're signing up to.

First, How Does This Affect Me?

This site has a comprehensive explanation of the issue, but the short version is:

Starting on Jan 1st 2015, new EU laws came into force stating that if you sell any digital goods to someone in an EU country, you must charge VAT based on that country's rate. You then have to pass that VAT onto your own country's tax authority (which, in the UK, means registering for the HMRC's Mini-One-Stop-Shop, and filing quarterly reports).

In addition to this, you need at least two pieces of information confirming the customer's address, and if those two don't match, you will need a third. You will need to store that information for ten years on an EU-based server, in case your country's tax authority decides to check up on you. This being relatively sensitive information, I believe you will also need to register yourself under data protection rules, though I'm a little unclear on this point.

All of which adds up to an enormous headache if you're a lone dev and you're not earning enough to afford an accountant. Luckily, there are options if you want to comply with the law, but don't want to jump through all those hoops.

itch.io is, sadly, the odd one out in this list. All the other options I'm going to list are essentially VAT-registered storefronts. This means that they take responsibility for ensuring their customers pay the correct VAT etc. and you, as a dev, don't have to worry about it.

itch.io is not a VAT-registered storefront. Instead, it is a marketplace which "facilities a transaction between buyer and seller. The buyer is ultimately paying the seller directly for each purchase." In which case you, the dev, are responsible for ensuring the correct VAT is applied, with all the various implications that result from that.

itch has introduced some VAT-specific features to make this slightly easier to do than it was previously, but you're still responsible for filing quarterly reports etc. The itch.io blog has a good post which goes into more detail about their approach to the VAT issue.

Unfortunately, because of this, I can't recommend selling your games through itch.io :( For small devs having to handle the VAT stuff yourself is far more hassle than it's worth. Which is crushing, because itch.io has been a hugely positive force for small devs, and it's not their fault that the EU changed the rules on them.

That said, I'm going to be judging the following payment options based on how they compare to itch.io. This is because, prior to the new VAT rules, itch.io was by far the easiest way to sell your games online. So before we move on, a quick list of the things itch.io gets right:

You are paid immediately for every sale.

Minimal fees (currently just paypal fees).

You get your own page for your games on the store; you don't need to work out hosting for yourself.

Reputation; itch.io has earned a reputation as the place to find interesting, unusual and niche games.

FastSpring

FastSpring is a general purpose (VAT-registered) e-commerce platform that's been around for a while now. It basically lets you put a link to a payment page on your website and, once payment is completed, emails your customers a link to your game. This does of course mean you will need to sort out your own web hosting.

The need for hosting aside, FastSpring offers relatively good terms compared to some of the other options here. It pays out twice a month (with a $25 minimum), and its fees are 8.9% of every purchase (or optionally 5.9% + $0.95). For a £3 game, this works out as roughly equivalent to the paypal fees you'd incur when selling via itch.io (though it doesn't scale as well for higher-priced games).

A potential downside is that customers might be more reluctant to pay via a general purpose e-commerce purchase page than with the other, more well-known options such as Humble, itch.io, etc. Beyond the 'I won't play anything that's not on Steam' crowd though, I don't know how much of an issue this actually is.

The Humble Widget

The Humble Widget is a widget provided by the folks behind the Humble Bundle which you can use to sell your games, with the option for customers to pay via PayPal or Amazon Payments. With the success of the various Humble Bundles, the Humble name is well-known and respected among games folk. Like FastSpring, you will need to sort out web hosting for yourself if you want to use the Widget.

Humble acts as a VAT-registered seller with the Widget, so you don't need to worry about that. As far as fees go, Humble takes 5% of the net revenue after payment processor fees (suggested here to be a further 5%). They pay out only after you've earned $250, within 30 days from the end of each calender month. It's not clear from the FAQ so I got in touch with Humble, who confirmed that the $250 figure is per-game, not per-dev. This puts it out of reach for me, as my games have yet to earn me much more than $200 combined.

Desura

Desura is a VAT-registered store à la Steam. As far as I can tell, Desura don't state their payment terms anywhere on their website, so the following information comes entirely from this gamasutra article.

Desura will only pay out once you've earned $500(!), and their fees are 30% of the sale price. Frankly this, combined with their incredibly unhelpful website, discounts them completely as far as I'm concerned.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a bit of a leftfield option here, being an online music store and not a games site. The recent announcement that they would become a VAT-registered seller in time for the introduction of the new laws, however, got me wondering if it would be possible to sell games through bandcamp too.

The short answer is: yes, it is possible to sell games through bandcamp. The longer answer, naturally, comes with some caveats. Firstly, as bandcamp is a music site, you will need to upload your game's soundtrack to bandcamp first. Then you can include your game as a bonus download that people will get when they buy your soundtrack.

The catch is that bandcamp don't allow zip or exe files by default for bonus downloads. They do, however, allow torrent files, so you could feasibly provide your game to customers via a torrent. That is, assuming you are in a position to ensure the torrent remains seeded (my knowledge of torrenting is fairly limited, so I'm unsure how you would go about restricting the torrent to people who bought your game; that may be an issue).

That said, there may be another option. I got in touch with bandcamp to confirm that providing a game via a torrent bonus download would not violate their TOS, and they replied that, not only would it not violate their terms, but that they would be willing to enable zip file downloads for individual game devs. They would only do this on a case-by-case basis, and they do have relatively restrictive file size limits for bonus downloads (100MB, though they may be willing to increase that if you ask), so it won't be for everyone. If you have a game with a strong soundtrack and a relatively small file size though, this could be a good option.

Of all the options here bandcamp is the closest thing to itch.io, in the sense that you get your own a store page, and you are paid via PayPal as soon as you make a sale. Bandcamp take a 15% revenue share, the details of which are outlined here.

Steam

Included for completion's sake, but I don't view it as a viable option for most small devs. Paying $100 for the privilege of maybe, possibly, eventually being allowed on Steam is not a good deal as far as I am concerned.

Steam is really only worthwhile if you have already earned enough from your game that $100 is an acceptable expense, and you've garnered a big enough fanbase that you have a reasonable shot at making it through Greenlight.

Update: Following this post's initial publication, @nihilocrat got in touch to point out that Greenlight can actually prove an effective way to drive sales on other stores. So perhaps that $100 isn't necessarily money down the drain? This is definitely a YMMV kind of deal though. Both the twitter thread and his Greenlight stats are worth reading.

Update: Paddle

Another option I wasn't aware of before I originally published this post is Paddle. Similar to FastSpring, Paddle is a general purpose e-commerce platform, with slick-looking tools and checkout options. It is VAT-registered, pays out monthly, and has fees which compare favourably to FastSpring (5% + $0.50 for every transaction). If you were already looking at FastSpring, I'd definitely recommend you check out Paddle too.

In Summary

That's a lot of words, so here's a TL;DR: right now, FastSpring's probably your best bet, though I'd say Bandcamp's definitely worth a look too. Update: Obviously, now that itch.io's VAT-registered, I'd recommend you stick with it.

I've tried to include all of the most relevant options I'm aware of, but if you know of others, or if I've got any of the above information wrong, let me know via tweet or email. I'll try and keep this article updated as the situation changes (ideally itch.io will eventually find a better solution to the VAT issue and we can all go back to it).

2014 was a bad year. What with gamergate, losing the referendum, the tories in Westminster and the rise of UKIP down south, it was hard to find much cause for optimism.

And then in December I learned about the new EU VAT rules coming into force on Jan 1st. The new laws effectively mean I can no longer afford to *legally* sell my games via itch.io, having only just started doing so this year. So, yeah, not a good year.

Following this I had plans to run a kickstarter for the game, and spent the next six months working on a pitch, only to find my motivation slowly, painfully ebbing away. Ultimately I had to conclude that I just don't have it in me to run a whole kickstarter campaign on my own; there's just far too much work involved if you want to do it right.

Dark is Yonder Town
Having spent months painstakingly putting together the fancy fold-out books to go with it, I finally released my Dark is Yonder town album in February. It was pretty much ignored by everyone, but even so I feel it's one of the strongest, most mature pieces of work I've put out to date.

RUMBLECURSE(unreleased) A weird 4-player football game that uses controller rumbles to pass hidden information to the players. Unreleased because I'm still yet to actually test it with four people...

A collection of seven gravity-themed local multiplayer games I made for the makega.me Series pageant. Released for Pay-what-you-want on itch.io (17 people thought it was worth paying money for), and shown at Feral Vector. Very proud of this one.

Stomprace

Lucky Frame and Abertay hosted a cool alternative controller workshop in June, and I made this daft race game where you have to hammer cardboard tubes.

(unfinished) A short-form abstract roguelike where everything in the game is encrypted. Was planning on releasing it in the New Year for £3 or so, but with the new EU laws, I guess that's not happening anymore. Part of the Leftfield collection at EGX London, written up in RPS, Vice.

My take on the GREAT ARTIST genre. More of a musical instrument than its inspiration. Written about in Kill Screen, RPS. I also took this to GameCity, along with a fancy custom controller I built for it:

Bookbinding
Also at GameCity I had a stall where I sold zines, Dark is Yonder Town, and the above fancy DVDs containing every game and piece of software I'd written to date. I sold about 2/3rds of the stuff I took with me, which is pretty good going, I think. It might have been nice to do more stuff like this, but I guess it's probably not going to happen now.

...and all those lonesome stars
A (massively?) local multiplayer deathmatch, supporting up to 80 players. I made this specifically for the Whispered Truths controller above, though it'll work with any keyboard/mouse combo.

Wake Up, Little One
...and one last game made in the week before Hogmanay. Deliberately a very light, undemanding thing.

And next?
For the past five years, I've been working part time in a supermarket and making games (etc.) in my free time. Originally my plan was to turn my gamemaking into a full-time business, but realistically that's not going to happen (especially now the EU have effectively prevented me from selling anything on the internet). So, starting January, I'm officially looking for work. If you know of any job opportunities for someone with my particular talents, I'd be very grateful if you could send them my way.

I'm afraid [encrypted] and Hummingbird are probably not going to see proper releases. Having put so much time into them I don't feel comfortable releasing them for free, and as established I have no way of charging for them without breaking EU law.

Hi! It's been a while since I've had any news to post. I've just uploaded the collection of local multiplayer games I made for the recent makega.me pageant to itch.io. I'm treating this as an experiment; I've set the itch page to pay-what-you-want, to see if people are willing to pay for an unusual collection of multiplayer games. If I manage to earn £100 from it, I'll spend a bit more time on the games and expand them in various ways. Realistically, it seems unlikely I'll hit that target, but I think it's worth a shot.

I just sent the following email out to a bunch of people as my inbox was clogged up with Pedalboard 2 requests. Figured I should make it public too:

Hi,

Apologies for replying with such an awkward form letter, but I've let my inbox get so backed up with Pedalboard requests/bug reports that this is really the only way I'll ever be able to reply to everyone.

Long story short, Pedalboard development is on indefinite hiatus and has been for a while now. This is partly due to a lack of motivation on my part, but mainly because I have a number of other projects that have a far higher priority. In addition, I always developed the app primarily for myself and as things stand it does pretty much everything I personally need it to.

I've added any feature requests and bug reports I've received to my todo list, but it's unlikely I'll act on them any time soon. It is entirely possible I'll resume work on the app at some point in the future, but for now, development is halted.

Technically I released this at the tail end of 2012, but no-one played it so I'm including it anyway. It's a very simple local multiplayer game with asymmetric controls and a deliberate 3-tone colour palette. I really like it, and judging from the response when I showed it at the DCA in November, other people do too.

4 Goose 2 FeatherThe first of a series of audiovisual sketches I made towards the beginning of the year. Related to this and this.

The biggest thing I did this year, and probably the thing I'm least satisfied with. It was designed to be a slightly clumsy, awkward thing, and it plays like a slightly clumsy, awkward thing. I can't tell if I should have spent more time on it, or less. It did get an amazing write up from Porpentine on RPS though.

Minimal 2 Player GameA minimal local multiplayer game. It's designed to surprise you, so the less I say about it, the better. Hint: it's not (exactly) what it looks like.

OSCAvoidA very simple proof-of-concept about using Open Sound Control to create a networked multiplayer game. It led directly on to...

EXCOSC game jamMy first attempt at hosting a game jam, and well, it wasn't exactly a huge success. Don't know if I'll attempt to host a jam again. You can download the game I made for it (Gunpowder's Kiss) at the above link.

Starlit Shoot-OutA simple local 2-player duel. I think it's pretty effective, and I'm really happy with the music :D

All Will Be ArtistsA zine I made to try and sum up my thoughts about music and where it might go in the future. It was meant to get me started on a big music-related project I've been mulling over since the end of 2012, but it's now almost 2014 and I still haven't started on it :(

An updated version of Screaming Snakeball that I took to GameCity. It got the most amazing response (as you can hear from that video). The link goes to the original (non-tournament edition) version; I'm still trying to work out what to do with the tournament edition. I'm tempted to put it up on itch.io for a couple of pounds, but it has such esoteric system requirements that I'm not sure anyone would buy it.

Gunpowder's EmbraceA (local) multiplayer version of my EXCOSC game. This also went to GameCity, but it wasn't particularly successful. Unreleased.

Pretty CreaturesA 4-player local multiplayer game with a boardgame-style traitor mechanic. I'm really pleased with it. I'll hopefully be taking it to Lucky Frame's Tacos, Bluegrass and Videogames thing on the 11th.

HummingbirdAn odd thing: a top-down shooter with no enemies, no score, and no time limit. I'm still working on it. It's very pretty, but I'm worried that I'm starting to lose motivation on it, and it's the kind of thing where I have no idea whether it'll appeal to other people at all :\

Huh, that's actually quite a long list. I didn't even realise I'd done so much.

I've just released a new game called OSCAvoid. It's a very simple thing, but the interesting part is that it's Open Sound Control-aware, meaning that you can play it in networked multiplayer. It also means you can easily connect other OSC-aware things to it and have it interact with them.

...which leads on to the really exciting part of this post:
Starting on Saturday, I'm running a game jam explicitly for OSC-aware games. I'm hoping it's going to lead to all sorts of unpredictable emergent interactions when we hook all the games up. It's going to be fun :)

I've just uploaded v1.01 of So Many Jagged Shards. Barring any bug fixes, this will be the final version. I did have plans for a lot more (see ToDo.txt) but I came to the conclusion that adding more stuff was really just an attempt to distract from the fact that the central mechanic isn't quite strong enough to sustain the game.

So this is the final version. The game can feel a bit empty at times, and the narrower corridors can be frustrating if you haven't quite mastered the controls, but I think there's still a bunch of interesting things going on in it. There's a character editor which saves characters as svg files, together with an unlimited version of the editor which unlocks after you've completed the game once. I'm really proud of the sound, which incorporates a synth based on my Brush Strokes VST plugin, 2 granulators, a delay, a bank of 8 tuned comb filters, a tanh-based distortion and a simple polyphonic wavetable synth. There's 5 different final levels, chosen according to how you've played up to that point. There's also a special alternate level which happens when you do something (I did want to do more of those). And of course the whole game is rendered as flat-shaded triangles, which I still think is really cool :)

In this country there's an old castle, on a crag, called Le Castel d'Épervier, between the cities of Ayas and Parcipia, of which the Lord of Korikos is the ruler and he's a rich man. In that castle a hawk can be found sitting on a finely wrought perch with a beautiful lady from Fairyland keeping it. Whoever keeps watch over this hawk for seven days and seven nights (some say three days and three nights) all alone will be visited by this pretty lady at the end of the seventh day (or the third day) and she'll grant him the first material thing he requests. This has been attempted many times.

So it happened one day that an Armenian king, a courageous man, kept watch over this hawk and after seven days, the lady came to him and asked him what he wanted, as he had performed his duty very well. So the King replied that he was a great enough lord and totally contented and wealthy, so he wanted nothing but the body of the pretty lady with which to do as he desired. She said that he was a fool, for he knew not what he was asking for; he could not have her because she was not an object, and she asked him to request a material thing. The King said he wished for nothing else. So she said to him, since he wouldn't ask, she would grant something to him and all his descendants, and she said, 'Your highness, you'll have war without peace for nine generations and you'll be in subjection to your enemies and you'll lack provisions and income'. And ever since that time all the kings of Armenia have been at war, in need of help, and under tribute to the Saracens.